Leadership Gilroy
Breathing
New Life into the
Bonanza Day Parade
Written & Submitted By Raquel Lopez
Leadership Class of 2018
T
hose of us who grew up in Gilroy remember the days
when you walked into the local grocery store and
everyone knew your name. We were a small town
where neighbors and kids interacted with one another. Times
have changed. We have almost lost that small town feel.
Our goal, as Leadership Gilroy’s Class of 2018, was to
disrupt daily routines, bring people out to socialize and
have fun, and bring back that small town feel. That led us
to choose the Bonanza Day Parade as our class project.
As part of our Leadership Gilroy program, we attended
monthly classes focused on team-building strategies and
developing relationships within our team. Trevor Van Laar
did a phenomenal job of getting the class to think critically
and use team-building skills that would later transfer to
our project.
We had the wonderful experience of our overnight retreat,
hosted by Hacienda de Leal. At the retreat we looked at
17 project ideas—knowing we wanted to impact youth,
preserve history, and bring back a small-town feel—and nar-
rowed our project ideas down to three. Our team then broke
into groups to research project proposals. A week later, teams
presented their proposals and shared findings with the class.
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GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
The Bonanza Day Parade was chosen.
The rebirth of the Bonanza Day Parade was the brainchild
of Richie Chavarria, a local auctioneer and Gilroy Historian
who convinced myself, Chad Haygood and Scott Alexander
to rally on his team and push through to get this project
going. We knew it would be a lot of work. In the beginning
we were told it couldn’t be done within the six months we
had to complete it. Richie was passionate about the project
and his energy and determination were contagious.
From the start, we thought of the Bonanza Day Parade as a
show for our community and wanted to stay true to the original
Bonanza days from 1968. We found the original hoosegow, but
is was in bad shape so class member Dan Mitchell created a
reproduction. Staying true to the original, we also planned to
have tug-o-war, junior royalty, free cotton candy, free hot dogs,
gunny sack races, the Clampers, marching bands, Adams 4-H,
FFA and real parade floats.
All of the Gilroy Unified Schools decided to participate in
the event. Our fundraising provided money to schools to build
their floats. Class members Chad Haygood and Scott Alexander
secured the use of 14 trailers donated by local businesses.
Schools were competing for a chance to win a piece of the
december 2018-january 2019
gmhtoday.com